If that seems unfair, you're right. If a suburban school board has the power to negotiate pension benefits for its teachers and staff, then the district ought to eat those costs and the members of its school board should be held accountable for any giveaways in the next election.

Instead, under Illinois law, costs of those negotiated benefits in suburban and Downstate districts are borne by the state.

This is one of the arcane and head-scratching facts spotlighted in last week's failed attempt to reform the pension system for local and state government employees, a system so deep in debt — to the tune of at least $83 billion — that it is dragging down the state's entire finances.

Just how bad is it? The Civic Committee of The Commercial Club of Chicago calculated that just the growth of pension costs from 2008 to 2013 is greater than the entire general funds appropriation for the Illinois Department of Human Services. Or more than half of the State Board of Education appropriation.

The idea that local school districts or any other unit of local government should be able to pass any of those costs onto taxpayers outside of their jurisdiction amounts to taxation without representation.

House Speaker Michael Madigan proposed to do something about this lunacy by shifting those costs back to suburban and Downstate school districts. (Chicago Public Schools already pays its own pension costs.) That would be in addition to other reforms Madigan was proposing.

But some Republicans and Downstate Democrats feared that such "cost shifting" would increase property taxes in their home districts, so many opposed it. Republicans charged that Madigan was adding the cost-shifting proposal to the reform package as a "poison pill." Their reasoning was that Madigan wanted to make his organized labor backers happy by inserting a provision into the reform package that he knew would lose enough GOP votes to kill the entire package. Republicans, fearing for their own jobs in the next election, obliged by refusing to vote for any package that contained cost shifting.

Gov. Pat Quinn, wanting to get something done in this session, agreed to leave out the cost shifting for now, but added that at some point those suburban and Downstate districts would have to take responsibility for their own actions. Madigan, in turn, announced he would vote against the package without cost shifting, thus signaling compliant Democrats that they, too, should oppose the legislation.

And, thus, pension reform died.

Too bad more Republicans didn't have the guts of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

As you are reading this, Wisconsin voters are deciding whether to recall Walker for daring to challenge gluttonous public employee unions in his state by spearheading legislation that limits collective bargaining rights for most public employees to wages. By some accounts, this helped eliminate a $3.6 billion state budget deficit and saved localities millions of dollars.

Of course, the chances of that happening in Illinois are nil, considering how influential public employee unions are in this Democratic-run state. But you might have expected Illinois Republicans would go for something, anything, that would at last enact some meaningful pension reform. Even if it forced local districts to rein in their habit of caving in to demands for excessive pensions.

I did expect better from Republicans. After all, they're the party of local control and small government. Except, I guess, when small governments have a chance to fob off some of their costs to the larger government.

The unions are little better in Illinois. They're not content with having inserted in the state constitution a provision that protects their pensions. I can imagine they also like the idea of the state backing their benefits, instead of relying on capricious local taxpayers who might revolt if the pension costs ended up in their property tax bills.

Except, the joke is on the unions: The state improperly used the pension funds to balance its budget, and now those pensions are the worst-funded in the nation. So, what now?

Dennis Byrne, a Chicago writer, blogs in The Barbershop in chicagonow.com.